Welcome to the Miss Thrifty Blog for the 419th Carnival of Personal Finance! This is one of my favourite blog carnivals, rounding up some of the best personal finance blog posts from around the globe. If you are new to Miss Thrifty you can subscribe to posts, connect on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

I always enjoy hosting the Carnival of Personal Finance, and thinking of a fun theme. This time around, I have settled upon the humble toad: the subject of one of my favourite poems about work and money:

Toads

Why should I let the toad workSquat on my life?Can’t I use my wit as a pitchforkAnd drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soilsWith its sickening poison –Just for paying a few bills!That’s out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits:Lecturers, lispers,Losers, loblolly-men, louts-They don’t end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanesWith fires in a bucket,Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-They seem to like it.

Ah, were I courageous enoughTo shout, Stuff your pension!But I know, all too well, that’s the stuffThat dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad-likeSquats in me, too;Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarneyMy way of gettingThe fame and the girl and the moneyAll at one sitting.

I don’t say, one bodies the otherOne’s spiritual truth;But I do say it’s hard to lose either,When you have both.

Philip Larkin

Without further ado, here are this week’s picks:

One reason why I like Toads so much is that it makes its point – but it does so with plenty of dark humour. Likewise, all of this week’s Editor’s Picks made me smile, in one way or another.

Gary from Gajizmo.com presents Questions To Ask The Interviewer. This is a post about how to take advantage of every part of the job interview process. While most interviewees begin to relax during the end of the interview, knowing what questions to ask your interview may just give you a leg-up on the competition. There are some corkers here: I think the first one (“Is there any reason why you wouldn’t hire me?”) is for the brave, but is my favourite.

Adam from Adam Hagerman – Financial Coach presents 9 Tips and Tricks To Kick Your Bad Spending Habits. We all have those troublesome spending habits that cause pain to our budgets on a monthly basis. Here are Adam’s nine top tips to help break those habits and get on a better path to financial freedom. Some of the ideas, you will have come across before; others, such as the suggestion to write DO YOU REALLY NEED THIS? across your bank card, may have sudden and marked effects on your spending.

Nicole from Grumpy Rumblings presents Money can’t buy love, tracing through 13 years of joint financial decisions with her husband. I rather like the decision to splash out on Le Creuset early on!

Here is the best of the rest. (And scroll to the bottom for some bonus Larkin toadiness…)

Money Management

Ray from Squirrelers presents 3 Time-Related Factors to Consider Before Spending Money. When we spend our money, it’s important to consider the role of time! This post discusses how time can play a role in increasing the true “cost” of our purchases. (Incidentally, the same theme is explored in a guest post I have coming up…)

Ross from Wallet Hub presents How credit scores work?, which sets out a beginner’s guide to what your credit score is, and how credit scoring works.

Matt Bell from Sound Mind Investing presents Bling at the Box Office. During the recession, Hollywood pulled back on displays of conspicuous consumption. But no longer. What do today’s movies say about our economy, and our culture?

SB from One Cent at a Time presents Why your Neighbor is Richer than You, listing five reasons why your neighbours may seem richer than you are. For example they may be better at budgeting, or may earn earn extra money on side. I read this post with curiosity because I have never worried that my neighbours are richer than I am. APATHY. Tsk.

Mrs PoP from Planting Our Pennies presentsSecuring Your Accounts Against Fraud. After a recent bout with identity theft, Mrs PoP outlines some of the steps the PoPs are taking to secure their online financial accounts from fraud.

Emily from Evolving Personal Finance presentsRethinking Our Student Loan Repayment. If you had student loan debt with an interest rate under 2% that you could pay off today, would you get rid of the debt or invest the money? Emily investigates.

Lindsey D from Canadian Cents & Sensibility presentsHow to Earn Rewards Points without a Credit Card. This post is for people who don’t want to use their credit card for everyday purchases, but who still want to rackup points in rewards programmes.

Investing

Eric from Narrow Bridge Finance presents How to Start Retirement Savings in Your 40s. Following a post on saving for retirement, one of Eric’s readers took the topic to heart, and posted a heartfelt comment about starting to save for retirement in your 40s…

D4L from Dividend Growth Stocks presents 3 Styles Of Successful Dividend Investing. There are many ways to categorise the different styles of investing in dividend stocks: yield, risk, growth and so on. An investment strategy based on any of these can be successful. Over the years, however, D4L has found that most dividend investing styles fall into one of the three major categories…

Jon from Novel Investor presents Building An Investment Checklist. He argues that an investment checklist keeps you in your comfort zone, and helps you to stick to your own guidelines, making methodical investment decisions.

Dividend Growth Investor from Dividend Growth Investor presents Lower Entry Prices Mean Locking Higher Yields Today, and says, “If you pay a cheap price for stocks, you essentially lock in a higher current yield. In this situation, your margin of safety is higher as well. The advice is usually to buy stocks when there is blood on the streets.”

Don from My Dollar Plan presents Should You Reinvest Dividends? Reinvesting dividends can have a huge impact on your returns, for better or for worse…

Edward Antrobus from Edward Antrobus presents Basic Car Maintenance You Can Perform Yourself. Car maintenance is important, and doing it yourself can save a lot of money. Here are quick guides to five of the most important DIY car maintenance tasks.

Michael Kitces from Nerd’s Eye View presentsLatest Social Security Trustees Report For 2013 Confirms Most Benefits Will Still Be Paid, and says, “Recently, the Social Security trustees’ report was released for 2013, revealing that while Social Security is on an unsustainable path, even if NOTHING is done to fix it, the consequences will merely be a 23% benefits cut beginning in 20 years. Does that mean we’ve been overstating the true consequences of Social Security’s “insolvency” after all?”

John from Card Hub Blog presentsAsk the Experts: Policy Changes for a Brighter Retirement, and says, “We’ve all heard there’s something of a perfect storm brewing on the retirement front, what with the U.S. population aging rapidly, Congress preoccupied with partisan politics, and the Great Recession wreaking havoc on our net worth. But do those of us who aren’t facing imminent retirement really care? Read on!”

An interesting selection of articles – I’ve bookmarked several of them to read tomorrow at work!

I’m looking forward to reading the one about comparing yourself to your neighbours. We try not to do it but my lots of my friends and people of the same generation (late 20’s/early 30’s) always seem to be competing amongst themselves. Years ago it used to be on weight, hair and make up – now it’s on house, marriage and babies! x

meet miss thrifty

Miss Thrifty is a woman on a mission. She lives in Greater Manchester, UK, and never pays full price for anything. Spend less, live within your means and get out of debt - without resorting to recycling teabags. Read more >